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Carnegie Speech

To be understood and to understand - because client service matters

Enterprise

"I will see a ten (10) times return on NativeAccent® in the first year!"
– Tier 1 Managed Services firm using NativeAccent globally

Through rapid, accurate and cost-effective spoken English assessment and training, Carnegie Speech delivers significant financial returns by reducing hiring and training costs, minimizing average call handling time and increasing customer service / CSAT scores.

Carnegie Speech Assessment has helped global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and call center operations quickly identify and train the best candidates, ensuring that English-proficient personnel are available to meet workflow requirements and effectively communicate with their customers.

NativeAccent optimizes the spoken-English performance of BPO and call center personnel, increasing spoken English proficiency up to 100% in as little as 20-hours of training. As computerized training augments classroom instruction, or is used for self-paced training, costs can be reduced by as much as 50%.

Because Improving Spoken English Matters

Carnegie Speech was selected by a Fortune 50 IT services company to improve spoken English skills among their new employees. With only 33% of new hires passing an internal assessment for speech articulation, and only 22% passing on pace and pausing, the enterprise was encountering serious operational and customer service challenges.

The results from NativeAccent training were immediate: with only 13-hours of NativeAccent training, 88% of new employees passed the articulation assessment and 96% passed the pace and pausing assessment. The software optimized voice and accent trainer time by covering 64% of the new employee training curriculum. This reduced our client's spoken English training cost per employee by 50%.

Because Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Matters

In a study by a major Indian BPO, NativeAccent was proven to improve the spoken English skills among those agents with the lowest CSAT scores. With an average pre-training CSAT score of 29%, this group's performance had a negative impact on both customer satisfaction and enterprise operational and financial performance.

Results of NativeAccent training were immediate and significant. With 15-hours of training, average English fluency scores increased by 95%, which then enabled the group to achieve a 55% CSAT score – a 93% increase.

According to the Voice Coach managing this project, by letting agents hear words and sentences in real-time, NativeAccent made it easier for agents to understand their mistakes and neutralize their accents.

Because Voice and Accent Training Matters

With 50% of new hire candidates for our Filipino BPO client failing English fluency tests – and another 29% demonstrating borderline English fluency skills – our Filipino BPO client assigned this group to train with NativeAccent from Carnegie Speech. With an average of less than 10-hours of NativeAccent training, 100% of previously failing or borderline students exceeded accent neutralization thresholds and passed the English proficiency test.

Because Employee Retention Matters

A major Indian BPO assigned its lowest-performing agents to use NativeAccent to improve their English fluency skills and avoid possible termination. After only an average of 6.5 hours of NativeAccent training, spoken English assessment scores improved by over 70%, which allowed 90% of at-risk agents to be retained.

Commenting on the successful conversion of at-risk, underperforming agents, the lead voice and accent trainer and voice-coach claimed that NativeAccent was the best way to improve English pronunciation skills.

Because Increasing the Employable Hiring Pool Matters

Our client, a major Filipino BPO training academy, was challenged to find English fluent personnel for their rapidly expanding call center client base. With qualified candidates difficult to find, our client recalled candidates previously rejected by the BPO hiring process due to their poor English skills, and asked them to use NativeAccent to improve their English skills to be re-considered for employment.

With only 10-hours of NativeAccent training, the results pleased both our client and its BPO client base. Among the previously rejected candidates that submitted to 10-hours of NativeAccent training, 70% were regarded as hirable.

Because the Student's Native Language Matters

Our client, a major BPO with employees in India, the United States and Europe was challenged to hire English proficient agents to manage customer relations and support its English-speaking clientele. Unique challenges were presented as prospective employees had over 31 native languages – including Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Carnegie Speech Assessment and NativeAccent were used to address this challenge. Participants were asked to train on NativeAccent for 25 hours. At the end of the training period, student phonemic improvement averaged 300%.

Because NativeAccent customizes each student's training based on their native language and individual proficiency, the software enabled this incredibly diverse group of students to realize significant accent reduction and improve their spoken English.

Because Choosing the Right Product Matters

A Central American BPO contacted Carnegie Speech with an unusual request. Although their corporate headquarters had purchased an expensive English training system, actual spoken language training performance was lagging. Regional managers were scrambling for an alternative – and willing to pay out of their own pocket.

Carnegie Speech welcomed the challenge and was gratified with the results of a head-to-head competition between Carnegie Speech's NativeAccent and a competitive product. After only 15-hours of Carnegie Speech's NativeAccent use, 75% of trained employees significantly improved their spoken English proficiency. Employees trained by the competitive product were less fortunate as over 80% actually saw their spoken English proficiency decrease after training.

While significant, the results were not surprising. First, the competitive product focused on reading and writing while NativeAccent is focused on spoken English training. Likewise, NativeAccent's flexibility better fit into our client's limited training time and resources. While our competitor offered a year-long training program, Carnegie Speech focused on the client's needs for rapid, focused spoken English training.